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THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE
INNER TEMPLE
I WAS born, and passed
the first seven years of my life, in the Temple. Its church, its
halls, its gardens, its fountain, its river, I had almost said
-- for in those young years, what was this king of rivers to me
but a stream that watered our pleasant places? -- These are of
my oldest recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself
more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser,
where he speaks of this spot.
There when they came, whereas those
bricky towers,
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide,
Till they decayd through pride.
Indeed, it is the most
elegant spot in the metropolis. What a transition for a countryman
visiting London for the first time -- the passing from the crowded
Strand or Fleet-street, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent
ample squares, its classic green recesses! What a cheerful, liberal
look hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks
the greater garden: that goodly pile
Of building strong, albeit of Paper
hight,
confronting, with massy contrast, the
lighter, older, more fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt,
with the cheerful Crown-office Row (place of my kindly engendure),
right opposite the stately stream, which washes the garden-foot
with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems but just
weaned from her Twickenham Naiades! a man would give something
to have been born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has
that fine Elizabethan hall, where the fountain plays, which I
have made to rise and fall, how many times! to the astoundment
of the young urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to
guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail
the wondrous work as magic! What an antique air had the now almost
effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals
with that Time which they measured, and to take their revelations
of its flight immediately from heaven, holding correspondence
with the fountain of light! How would the dark line steal imperceptibly
on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement,
never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud -- or the first arrests
of sleep!
Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived!
What a dead thing is
a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its
pert or solemn dulness of communication, compared with the simple
altar-like structure, and silent heart-language of the old dial!
It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost
every where vanished? If its business-use be superseded by more
elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded
for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures
not protracted after sun-set, of temperance, and good-hours. It
was the primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam
could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate
for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the birds to apportion
their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to
fold by. The shepherd "carved it out quaintly in the sun;"
and, turning philosopher by the very occupation, provided it with
mottos more touching than tombstones. It was a pretty device of
the gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of artificial
gardening, made a dial out of herbs and flowers. I must quote
his verses a little higher up, for they are full, as all his poetry
was, of a witty delicacy. They will not come in awkwardly I hope,
in a talk of fountains and sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet
garden scenes:
What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head.
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine.
The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach.
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness.
The mind, that ocean, where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
How well the skilful gardner drew,
Of flowers and herbs, this dial new!
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run:
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers?
[Footnote] * from a copy of verses entitled "The Garden."
The artificial fountains
of the metropolis are, in like manner, fast vanishing. Most of
them are dried up, or bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as
in that little green nook behind the South Sea House, what a freshness
it gives to the dreary pile! Four little winged marble boys used
to play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams
from their innocent-wanton lips, in the square of Lincoln's-inn,
when I was no bigger than they were figured. They are gone, and
the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell me, is gone by, and
these things are esteemed childish. Why not then gratify children,
by letting them stand? Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
They are awakening images to them at least. Why must every thing
smack of man, and mannish? Is the world grown up? Is childhood
dead? Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and the best
some of the child's heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments?
The figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged living figures,
that still flitter and chatter about that area, less gothic in
appearance? or is the splutter of their hot rhetoric one half
so refreshing and innocent as the little cool playful streams
those exploded cherubs uttered?
They have lately gothicised the entrance to the
Inner Temple-hall, and the library front, to assimilate them,
I suppose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at all resemble.
What is become of the winged horse that stood over the former?
a stately arms! and who has removed those frescoes of the Virtues,
which Italianized the end of the Paper-buildings? -- my first
hint of allegory! They must account to me for these things, which
I miss so greatly.
The terrace is, indeed,
left, which we used to call the parade; but the traces are passed
away of the footsteps which made its pavement awful! It is become
common and profane. The old benchers had it almost sacred to themselves,
in the forepart of the day at least. They might not be sided or
jostled. Their air and dress asserted the parade. You left wide
spaces betwixt you, when you passed them. We walk on even terms
with their successors. The roguish eye of J----ll, ever ready
to be delivered of a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a
repartee with it. But what insolent familiar durst have mated
Thomas Coventry ? -- whose person was a quadrate, his step massy
and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, his gait peremptory
and path-keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving column,
the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow-beater of equals and
superiors, who made a solitude of children wherever he came, for
they fled his insufferable presence, as they would have shunned
an Elisha bear. His growl was as thunder in their ears, whether
he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke, his invitatory notes being,
indeed, of all, the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff
aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each
majestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches,
but a palmful at once, diving for it under the mighty flaps of
his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket; his waistcoat red and angry,
his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, and by adjuncts,
with buttons of a obsolete gold. And so he paced the terrace.
By his side a milder
form was sometimes to be seen; the pensive gentility of Samuel
Salt. They were coevals, and had nothing but that and their benchership
in common. In politics Salt was a whig and Coventry a staunch
tory. Many a sarcastic growl did the latter cast out -- for Coventry
had a rough spinous humour -- at the political confederates of
his associate, which rebounded from the gentle bosom of the latter
like cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle Samuel Salt.
S. had the reputation
of being a very clever man, and of excellent discernment in the
chamber practice of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount
to much. When a case of difficult disposition of money, testamentary
or otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily handed it over with
a few instructions to his man Lovel, who was a quick little fellow,
and would despatch it out of hand by the light of natural understanding,
of which he had an uncommon share. It was incredible what repute
for talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of gravity. He was a
shy man; a child might pose him in a minute -- indolent and procrastinating
to the last degree. Yet men would give him credit for vast application
in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted with himself with
impunity. He never dressed for a dinner party but he forgot his
sword -- they wore swords then -- or some other necessary part
of his equipage. Lovel had his eye upon him on all these occasions,
and ordinarily gave him his cue. If there was any thing which
he could speak unseasonably, he was sure to do it. He was to dine
at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of her
execution ; -- and L. who had a wary foresight of his probable
hallucinations, before he set out, schooled him with great anxiety
not in any possible manner to allude to her story that day. S.
promised faithfully to observe the injunction. He had not been
seated in the parlour, where the company was expecting the dinner
summons, four minutes, when, a pause in the conversation ensuing,
he got up, looked out of window, and pulling down his ruffles
-- an ordinary motion with him -- observed, "it was a gloomy
day," and added, "Miss Blandy must be hanged by this
time, I suppose." Instances of this sort were perpetual.
Yet S. was thought by some of the greatest men of his time a fit
person to be consulted, not alone in matters pertaining to the
law, but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments of conduct
-- from force of manner entirely. He never laughed. He had the
same good fortune among the female world, -- was a known toast
with the ladies, and one or two are said to have died for love
of him -- I suppose, because he never trifled or talked gallantry
with them, or paid them, indeed, hardly common attentions. He
had a fine face and person, but wanted methought, the spirit that
should have shown them off with advantage to the women. His eye
lacked lustre. -- Not so, thought Susan P----; who, at the advanced
age of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening time, unaccompanied,
wetting the pavement of B----d Row, with tears that fell in drops
which might be heard, because her friend had died that day --
he, whom she had pursued with a hopeless passion for the last
forty years -- a passion, which years could not extinguish or
abate; nor the long resolved, yet gently enforced, puttings off
of unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished purpose.
Mild Susan P----, thou hast now thy friend in heaven!
Thomas Coventry was
a cadet of the noble family of that name. He passed his youth
in contracted circumstances, which gave him early those parsimonious
habits which in after-life never forsook him; so that, with one
windfall or another, about the time I knew him he was master of
four or five hundred thousand pounds; nor did he look, or walk,
worth a moidore less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite the
pump in Serjeant's-inn, Fleet-street. J., the counsel, is doing
self-imposed penance in it, for what reason I divine not, at this
day. C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray, where he seldom spent
above a day or two at a time in the summer; but preferred, during
the hot months, standing at his window in this damp, close, well-like
mansion, to watch, as he said, "the maids drawing water all
day long." I suspect he had his within- door reasons for
the preference. Hic cursus et arma fuere. He might think his treasures
more safe. His house had the aspect of a strong box. C. was a
close hunks -- a hoarder rather than a miser -- or, if a miser,
none of the mad Elwes breed, who have brought discredit upon a
character, which cannot exist without certain admirable points
of steadiness and unity of purpose. One may hate a true miser,
but cannot, I suspect, so easily despise him. By taking care of
the pence, he is often enabled to part with the pounds, upon a
scale that leaves us careless generous fellows halting at an immeasurable
distance behind. C. gave away 30,000 l. at once in his life-time
to a blind charity. His house- keeping was severely looked after,
but he kept the table of a gentleman. He would know who came in
an$ who went out of his house, but his kitchen chimney was never
suffered to freeze.
Salt was his opposite
in this, as in all -- never knew what he was worth in the world;
and having but a competency for his rank, which his indolent habits
were little calculated to improve, might have suffered severely
if he had not had honest people about him. Lovel took care of
every thing. He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser,
his friend, his "flapper," his guide, stop-watch, auditor,
treasurer. He did nothing without consulting Lovel, or failed
in any thing without expecting and fearing his admonishing. He
put himself almost too much in his hands, had they not been the
purest in the world. He resigned his title almost to respect as
a master, if L. could ever have forgotten for a moment that he
was a servant.
I knew this Lovel. He
was a man of an incorrigible and losing honesty A good fellow
withal, and "would strike." In the cause of the oppressed
be never considered inequalities, or calculated the number of
his opponents. He once wrested a sword out of the hand of a man
of quality that had drawn upon him; and pommelled him severely
with the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered insult to a female
-- an occasion upon which no odds against him could have prevented
the interference of Lovel. He would stand next day bare-headed
to the same person, modestly to excuse his interference -- for
L. never forgot rank, where something better was not concerned.
L. was the liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face as gay
as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to resemble (I have a portrait
of him which confirms it), possessed a fine turn for humorous
poetry -- next to Swift and Prior ---- moulded heads in clay or
plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural genius
merely; turned cribbage boards, and such small cabinet toys, to
perfection; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal facility;
made punch better than any man of his degree in England; had the
merriest quips and conceits, and was altogether as brimful of
rogueries and inventions as you could desire. He was a brother
of the angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty, honest companion
as Mr. Isaac Walton would have chosen to go a fishing with. I
saw him in his old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten,
in the last sad stage of human weakness -- "a remnant most
forlorn of what he was, "yet even then his eye would light
up upon the mention of his favourite Garrick. He was greatest,
he would say, in Bayes -- "was upon the stage nearly throughout
the whole performance, and as busy as a bee." At intervals,
too, he would speak of his former life, and how he came up a little
boy from Lincoln to go to service, and how his mother cried at
parting with him, and how he returned, after some few years' absence,
in his smart new livery to see her, and she blessed herself at
the change, and could hardly be thought to believe that it was
"her own bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding,
he would weep, till I have wished that sad second-childhood might
have a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the common
mother of us all in no long time after received him gently into
hers.
With Coventry, and
with Salt, in their walks upon the terrace, most commonly Peter
Pierson would join, to make up a third. They did not walk linked
arm in arm in those days -- "as now our stout triumvirs sweep
the streets," -- but general with both hands folded behind
them for state, or with one at least behind, the other carrying
a cane. P. was a benevolent, but not a prepossessing mad. He had
that in his face which you could not term unhappiness; it rather
implied an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks were colourless,
even to whiteness. His look was uninviting, resembling (but without
his sourness) that of our great philanthropist. I know that he
did good acts, but I could never make out what he was. Contemporary
with these, but subordinate, was Daines Barrington -- another
oddity -- he walked burly and square -- in imitation, I think,
of Coventry -- howbeit he attained not to the dignity of his prototype.
Nevertheless, he did pretty well, upon the strength of being a
tolerable antiquarian, and having a brother a bishop. When the
account of his year's treasurership came to be audited, the following
singular charge was unanimously disallowed by the bench: "Item,
disbursed Mr. Allen, the gardener, twenty shillings, for stuff
to poison the sparrows, by my orders." next to him was old
Barton -- a jolly negation, who took upon him the ordering of
the bills of fare for the parliament chamber, where the benchers
dine -- answering to the combination rooms at college -- much
to the easement of his less epicurean brethren. I know nothing
more of him. -- Then Read, and Twopenny -- Read, good- humoured
and personable -- Twopenny, good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous
in jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was attenuated
and fleeting. Many must remember him (for he was rather of later
date) and his singular gait, which was performed by tree steps
and a jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little efforts,
like that of a child beginning to walk; the jump comparatively
vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he learned this figure,
or what occasioned it, I could never discover. It was neither
graceful in itself, nor seemed to answer the purpose any better
than common walking. The extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect,
set him upon it. It was a trial of poising. Twopenny would often
rally him upon his leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty; but
W. had no relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have
heard that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely, when any thing
had offended him. Jackson -- the omniscient Jackson he was called
-- was of this period. He had the reputation of possessing more
multifarious knowledge than any man of his time. He was the Friar
Bacon of the less literate portion of the Temple. I remember a
pleasant passage, of the cook applying to him, with much formality
of apology, or instructions how to write down edge bone of beef
in his bill of commons. He was supposed to know, if any man in
the world did. He decided the orthography to be -- as I have given
it -- fortifying his authority with such anatomical reasons as
dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned and happy. Some
do spell it yet perversely, aitch bone, from a fanciful resemblance
between its shape, and that of the aspirate so denominated. I
had almost forgotten Mingay with the iron hand -- but he was somewhat
later. He had lost his right hand by some accident, and supplied
it with a grappling hook, which he wielded with a tolerable adroitness.
I detected the substitute, before I was old enough to reason whether
it were artificial or not. I remember the astonishment it raised
in me. He was a blustering, loudtalking person; and I reconciled
the phenomenon to my ideas as an emblem of power -- somewhat like
the horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses. Baron Maseres,
who walks (or did till very lately) in the costume of the reign
of George the Second, closes my imperfect recollections of the
old benchers of the Inner Temple. Fantastic forms, whither are
ye fled? Or, if the like of you exist, why exist they no more
for me? Ye inexplicable, half- understood appearances, why comes
in reason to tear away the preternatural mist, bright or gloomy,
that enshrouded you? Why make ye so sorry a figure in my relation,
who made up to me -- to my childish eyes -- the mythology of the
Temple? In those days I saw Gods, as "old men covered with
a mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of classic
idolatry perish, -- extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery
of legendary fabling,in the heart of childhood, there will, for
ever, spring up a well of innocent or wholesome superstition --
the seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital -- from
every-day forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that
little Goshen there will be light, when the grown world flounders
about in the darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood,
and while dreams, reducing childhood, shall be left, imagination
shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth.
P.S. I have done injustice
to the soft shade of Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect
memory, and the erring notices of childhood! Yet I protest I always
thought that he had been a bachelor! This gentleman, R. N. informs
me, married young, and losing his lady in child-bed, within the
first year of their union, fell into a deep melancholy, from the
effects of which, probably, he never thoroughly recovered. In
what a new light does this place his rejection (O call it by a
gentler name!) of mild Susan P----, unravelling into beauty certain
peculiarities of this very shy and retiring character -- Henceforth
let no one receive the narratives of Elia for true records! They
are, in truth, but shadows of fact -- verisimilitudes, not verities
-- or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts of history.
He is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and would have done
better perhaps to have consulted that gentleman, before he sent
these incondite reminiscences to press. But the worthy sub-treasurer
-- who respects his old and his new masters -- would but have
been puzzled at the indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man
wots not, peradventure, of the license which Magazines have arrived
at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of their existence
beyond the Gentleman`s -- his furthest monthly excursions in this
nature having been long confined to the holy ground of honest
Urban's obituary. May it be long before his own name shall help
to swell those columns of unenvied flattery! -- Meantime, O ye
New Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is
himself the kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmities over-take
him ---- he is yet in green and vigorous senility -- make allowances
for them, remembering that "ye yourselves are old."
So may the Winged Horse, our ancient badge and cognisance, still
flourish so may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your church
and chambers! so may the sparrows, in default of more melodious
quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your walks! so may the fresh-
coloured and cleanly nursery maid, who, by leave, airs her playful
charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsy
as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion! so may the younkers
of this generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with
the same superstitious veneration, with which the child Elia gazed
on the Old Worthies that solemnized the parade before ye!
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